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Returnable | Yes |
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Return Window | 30 days from delivery |
Refund Timelines | Typically, an advance refund will be issued within 24 hours of a drop-off or pick-up. For returns that require physical verification, refund issuance may take up to 30 days after drop-off or pick up. Where an advance refund is issued, we will re-charge your payment method if we do not receive the correct item in original condition. See details here. |
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The Extinction of Irena Rey Hardcover – March 5, 2024
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National Bestseller
Named a must read by NPR, People, Vanity Fair, Electric Literature, Nylon, Alta Journal, CrimeReads and Debutiful
Named a most anticipated book by Elle, The Millions, Bustle, Lit Hub, Dandelion Chandelier, Zibby Mag, Bookpage, and The Rumpus
“Oh my mushrooms, The Extinction of Irena Rey is incredibly strange, savvy, sly and hard to classify. I also couldn't put it down.” -The New York Times, Editors' Choice
From the International Booker Prize-winning translator and Women's Prize finalist, an utterly beguiling novel about eight translators and their search for a world-renowned author who goes missing in a primeval Polish forest.
Eight translators arrive at a house in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus. It belongs to the world-renowned author Irena Rey, and they are there to translate her magnum opus, Gray Eminence. But within days of their arrival, Irena disappears without a trace.
The translators, who hail from eight different countries but share the same reverence for their beloved author, begin to investigate where she may have gone while proceeding with work on her masterpiece. They explore this ancient wooded refuge with its intoxicating slime molds and lichens and study her exotic belongings and layered texts for clues. But doing so reveals secrets-and deceptions-of Irena Rey's that they are utterly unprepared for. Forced to face their differences as they grow increasingly paranoid in this fever dream of isolation and obsession, soon the translators are tangled up in a web of rivalries and desire, threatening not only their work but the fate of their beloved author herself.
This hilarious, thought-provoking debut novel is a brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language. It is an unforgettable, unputdownable adventure with a small but global cast of characters shaken by the shocks of love, destruction, and creation in one of Europe's last great wildernesses.
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
- Publication dateMarch 5, 2024
- Dimensions6.38 x 1.06 x 9.56 inches
- ISBN-101639731709
- ISBN-13978-1639731701
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From the Publisher
![The Extinction of Irena Rey, Jennifer Croft, Olga Tokarczuk](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/aplus-media-library-service-media/6a931fa0-aa5f-4269-8800-f4777565367f.__CR0,0,970,300_PT0_SX970_V1___.png)
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Oh my mushrooms, The Extinction of Irena Rey is incredibly strange, savvy, sly and hard to classify. I also couldn't put it down . . . mad with plot and language and gorgeous prose, and the result is a bacchanal.” ―The New York Times
“The Extinction of Irena Rey surprised me at every turn, moving between profound observations about nature, art, and communication . . . and surreal and baffling happenings that push the characters into a kind of fever-dream reality. Croft has certainly added 'novelist' to the list of writing-related skills she excels at, and what a joy that is to witness.” ―NPR.org
“Croft subverts expectations with a blackly comic, fiercely inventive drama that explores the cult of celebrity and the art of translation (an art this critically acclaimed, award-winning translator has mastered).” ―Washington Post
“As bewildering and beckoning as its cover, Jennifer Croft's locked-room mystery is something like Agatha Christie or Knives Out on mushrooms-ones not unlike those in the book itself.” ―Elle
“Bizarre and brilliant . . . above all tremendous fun . . . The Extinction of Irena Rey teems with rabbit-hole delights at every turn right up to the delicious final twist.” ―Wall Street Journal
“Absolutely bizarre in the best way, it's a fever dream of deception and desire.” ―People Magazine
“Wild . . . joyous.” ―Lauren Groff, Bustle
“Croft has constructed a canny exploration of how even English, despite its unique dominance, might be influenced by its brushes with the mysterious process that is translation.” ―The Atlantic
“Translator Jennifer Croft sends up her vocation in this waggish literary mystery.” ―Vanity Fair
“Deliciously twisty . . . I find it fascinating how Croft depicts the author-translator relationship as a kind of adversarial dialogue, with two people tussling to control the meaning of a text.” ―Electric Lit
“Wrought in lively prose and complemented by a dazzling suite of meta-textual hijinks set to the beat of a mystery novel, The Extinction of Irena Rey is an empathetic and comic investigation of the role of the translator within the literary project.” ―The Rumpus
“Croft spins such a seductive tale, it's impossible not to get sucked in.” ―Bustle
“[A] fun house of a debut novel . . . [The Extinction of Irena Rey] becomes not just a literary thriller but an examination of the delicate mix of desire, impersonation, ambition, and selfishness that the art of literary translation requires.” ―The New Republic
“Croft never misses a beat, drawing upon her translation background to deliver a juicy, bordering on absurd, intricate mediation on celebrity, communication, nature and the art of language.” ―The Seattle Times
“Croft has reinvented ecofiction with this seductive, erudite, and terribly funny tale about 'book people.'” ―World Literature Today
“The Extinction of Irena Rey is bursting with energy and cleverness, Croft's abundant linguistic gifts and stimulating ideas on display” ―New York Review of Books
“The Extinction of Irena Rey complects and complicates the relationships between translation and border politics, art and nature, image and text, truth and myth. It is about not just the extinction of its demigod-like author, but, perhaps, all of us.” ―Document Journal
“An interpersonal cacophony that crackles outward. . . a cleverly layered, multivocal novel that plays with our expectations of who is speaking and how meaning gets made in between authors, translators, and readers.” ―Chicago Review of Books
“A great homage to the art of translation and the circulatory system of language.” ―Charlottesville Daily Progress
“A fascinating exploration of art, celebrity, jealousy, and the wonders of nature.” ―AudioFile Magazine
“An astute take on human communication and the perils of the planet, embedded in a crafty detective mystery.” ―On the Seawall
“A dizzying novel . . . Croft's sense of humor and her finely drawn characters combine with her gift for depicting the beautiful but forbidding Bialowieza Forest to make The Extinction of Irena Rey a grand entertainment. This is a serious novel, but at the same time, one that doesn't take itself too seriously.” ―Alta Journal
“The Extinction puts translators first, and with humor and grace explores art, celebrity, and the power of language.” ―Lit Hub
“Jennifer Croft is the renowned translator of Olga Tokarczuk and this debut takes full advantage of her background in the best way possible.” ―CrimeReads
“Croft serves up a wickedly funny mystery involving an internationally famous author and her translators . . . This is a blast.” ―Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“[The Extinction of Irena Rey] is a metatextual feast that will keep readers wondering even after the book concludes.” ―Library Journal, starred review
“Delightfully wry.” ―Booklist, Starred Review
“Croft's exquisite facility with language is on full display throughout, both in wordplay and in evocative descriptions, particularly of place.” ―Bookreporter.com
“An incisive literary novel that troubles the divide between art, its interpretation, and real life.” ―Foreword Reviews, Starred Review
“Croft . . . makes for a wickedly funny satirist when it comes to some of the more obsequious behaviors involved in the translator-author relationship. At the same time-even in the midst of a joke-she writes profoundly about the philosophical stakes of translation.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“A wild and wonderfully unruly novel about translation and transmission, The Extinction of Irena Rey is a showcase for Jennifer Croft's acrobatic intellect, delicious humor, and voluptuous prose.” ―Katie Kitamura, author of INTIMACIES
“The Extinction of Irena Rey could only be written by master of language, a tamer of different tongues. It is brilliant, fun and absolutely alive.” ―Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of CHAIN GANG ALL STARS
“Mischievous and intellectually provocative, The Extinction of Irena Rey asks thrilling questions about the wilderness of language, the life of the forest, and the feral ambitions and failings of artists.” ―Megha Majumdar, author of A BURNING
“Generous and strange, funny and disconcerting, The Extinction of Irena Rey is a playground for the mind and an entrancing celebration of the sociality of reading, writing, and translation written by a master practitioner of all three.
” ―Alexandra Kleeman, author of SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN
“In The Extinction of Irena Rey, Jennifer Croft mines the complexity of translation, adoration, and symbiosis. At once a meditation on the networks required to bring literature to worldwide readers and a page-turner about the inevitable fallibilities of those systems, Extinction's push and pull is both thought-provoking and thrilling. I was rapt.” ―Emily Nemens, author of THE CACTUS LEAGUE
“Croft writes with an remarkable intensity.” ―Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize-winning author of FLIGHTS and DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD
“An exquisite pleasure. Croft unearths the interconnection between land and communities, revealing the collaborative networks of forests as clearly and incisively as she does that of the literary world. In this exquisite pleasure of a novel, in which I luxuriated on every page, Croft mines the vicissitudes of the translation world to reveal quite plainly that everything is connected, and translators deserve more.” ―Chelsea T. Hicks, author of A CALM & NORMAL HEART
“Homesick, is . . . boundary-pushing, or boundary-expanding . . . a translator's Bildungsroman, one in which art is first a beacon, then a home.” ―NPR on HOMESICK
“Every page of this stunning and surprising book turns words around and around.” ―The New York Times on HOMESICK
“Croft moves quickly between powerful scenes that made me think about my own sisters. I love how the language displays a child's consciousness. A haunting accomplishment.” ―Kali Fajardo-Anstine, author of SABRINA & CORINA and WOMAN OF LIGHT on HOMESICK
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing (March 5, 2024)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1639731709
- ISBN-13 : 978-1639731701
- Item Weight : 1.25 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.38 x 1.06 x 9.56 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #48,955 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #874 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #4,278 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #5,870 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
![Jennifer Croft](https://cdn.statically.io/img/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/01Kv-W2ysOL._SY600_.png)
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Clue to any future reader - make a cheat sheet with the 8 main characters' original names (the language they translate to) and their real names, with any other info you notice, like where they are from. Emilia/Spanish is the writer of the book originally and Alexis/English is the translator. The book they are all translating is written by Irena Rey and written in Polish.
I learned way too much about fungi and life cycles. Also parrots and beetles and honey hunting and lichen. I had a tough time imagining Irena's books being so successful as they were described, but I guess it's like when the sophisticated movie gets the Oscar and the one everyone actually watches gets bypassed. Her books sounded sophisticated and "meaningful."
So... all these people come together to translate her book into their languages, and she is acting strangely, then disappears. Poof! The cast follows her strict rules at first, but then divisions begin to show up. Irena has been idolized by her translators. Some of them come out of the spell and begin to behave as they want, others are still bound psychologically to do things exactly as Irena would have them do them. More than Irena herself disappears, the gang looks for clues, alliances and romances happen, as well as paranoia, enmity and a bit of psychosis.
The description on the front flap says it is hilarious and thought-provoking. Hilarious, not really. At least not to me. Odd, definitely. Engaging? Yes, I read it in 2 days. Thought-provoking? Yes, I'll definitely give it that. It's like going through a modern art museum. I like modern art, and I'll stand and ponder what emotions and thoughts a piece of art brings up in me. This is like that. Read it, make notes and exclamation marks in the margin if it's your own copy, and ponder it.
The books is very well written and I particularly like the snarky translator comments. I'm sure it would be a great book to discuss in a book club.
I wanted to like this book, but unfortunately I was quite bored. Although there were moments of humor sprinkled throughout and insightful commentary on translation and the tendency to idolize renowned authors, the overall story and characters failed to resonate with me. It is well-written though, so I think it could appeal to more literary readers. Also, I definitely learned a lot about fungi reading this!
In Extinction, our narrator for the most part is the original Translator (called "Spanish" but her name is Emi) - she provides comic relief, sharp insight and extra detail. At the start of the novel the main translator and the translators from other countries have come together in Warsaw to Irena Ray's home to read and translate her work, her magnum opus. It is expected that this work will win the Nobel and they are all incredibly excited.
Irena takes them to the forest and they gladly follow as they revere her. But they quickly confused when she disappears. There is plenty of comic relief as Serbian, Sweden, English, French, German, Slovenian, Spanish and Ukrainian argue about what to do. Because of course that's how Emi would relay them, only by their translating language.
What happens next is a true work of art ! The account continues as Emi (Spanish), details their investigation. As time passes, the translators are quite surprised of Irena Rey's secrets. In addition there is a mysterious poster hat Jennifer Croft has included on her own webpage.
Since I started reviewing books I have taken the time to read about the authors - whether they include it in the book or if other have reported upon them. Jennifer Croft is a pretty famous translatorand has translated for a Nobel Prize winner herself!
Croft knows what she is talking about and she has done it in unique and irrepressibly charming way!
Top reviews from other countries
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Initially the translators are named only by their languages, so we meet the characters: English, Spanish, Swedish, German, French, Serbian, Slovenian and Ukrainian. Soon we learn their names, of which Emilia (aka Spanish) and Alexis (aka English) are most prominent. The whole book is Emilia’s memoir of the 2017 summit, written in Polish and translated in English by Alexis a decade after the event. Emilia sees Alexis as a rival however, due to competing translation styles but also for the affection of Freddie (aka Swedish). Events spiral out of control with attempted assassinations, pistols at dawn duels, false flag instagrams and author impersonations piling on until a cross-country journey leads to a final revelation.
Crazed lustful translators who battle with other translators eager to assume the identity of their mutual author make for one bizarre and fun literary novel. There is the especial delight of the often sardonic footnotes provided by Alexis who thereby seeks to correct her portrayal as the villainess translator by Emilia. The whole package is enhanced by obviously being a comic satire inspired by Croft’s own real-life experiences translating eminent Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and their mutual win of the 2018 International Booker Prize leading up to Tokarczuk’s 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature. Tokarczuk’s own ‘magnum opus’ <i>The Books of Jacob</i> (2014) appeared soon after in English translation by Croft in 2021.
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